Event recorders provided on various mobile vehicles, such as planes and trains, are generally designed to record data associated with an event during operation of the vehicle. The event recorders are typically designed and built to store that recorded data in a crash-hardened memory unit. A crash-hardened memory unit is configured to withstand the severe conditions that may occur during an accident. The memory units for these event recorders are contained within enclosures that allow the stored data to remain intact after accidents or other abnormal events. An important purpose of the event recorder is to provide a source of data that can be retrieved from the event recorder after an event such as an accident, and provide a detailed and accurate accounting of exactly what happened leading up to and during the event.
On-scene investigations after events involving mobile vehicles are time consuming and are not always accurate. Often, investigators must rely on witness statements and approximations to assess the events and the relative timing of the events leading up to the accident and to determine who is at fault. It is therefore difficult to guarantee the correctness of these assessments. Insurance companies use these assessments to determine who must pay for the damage after an accident has occurred. Incorrect assessments lead to money being spent unnecessarily by the insurance companies whose clients were not at fault.
A system capable of recording, reproducing and analyzing information pertaining to an accident is very valuable. Investigations would be more accurate since the system will provide precise data prior to, during, and after the accident. Additionally, insurance companies will benefit due to improved investigation assessments. Existing event recorders record various data sets, but typically do not monitor the recorded data in order to provide alarms or other system notifications to other systems. Therefore, although event recorders have access to a large amount of pre-determined and generated locomotive signals, such as signals received from on-board train management systems, cab signaling systems, energy management systems, exhaust aftertreatment monitoring systems, braking systems, communication management systems, and operator fatigue or distraction monitoring systems, a great deal of potential real-time functionality that may be associated with access to this information remains under-utilized.
An integrated diagnostic, telemetry, and recording system for use with a locomotive is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,593,963 of Ballesty et al. that issued on Sep. 22, 2009 (the '963 patent). The '963 patent discloses a method of remotely detecting and controlling whether locomotive data indicative of at least one of integrated diagnostic data, telemetry data and recording systems data from a locomotive is valid locomotive data. The event recorder of the '963 patent records and transmits video, geographic data, and locomotive operating parameters, and allows for remote monitoring and diagnostics of track conditions, wayside equipment, and operator train management.
Although the system of the '963 patent may improve safety and aid in investigations regarding the operation of a locomotive, it may be less than optimal. In particular, the disclosed system of the '963 patent does not provide an event recorder that is able to synchronize data from a multitude of different sources. The system of the '963 patent also does not provide a customizable application programming interface (API) as part of the event recorder, allow a user to customize which particular events, operational characteristics, or any combination thereof will result in the generation of a system notification related to a desired system of the locomotive, and transmit such system notifications to one or more additional systems on-board the locomotive that may benefit from that system information.
The system and method of the present disclosure solves one or more problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.